Head Start - Day Care Partnership

Audubon Area Family Development Center
Grand Opening and Celebration

Owensboro, Kentucky | September 24, 1996

with Carol H. Rasco, Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy

Ms Carol H. Rasco, pictured below, addressed the large gathering following the luncheon. Some of her address is highlighted below.

The complete text of her remarks is also available via this link. Also, you may click on the following link for a review of the September 25th Messenger-Inquirer, the local newspaper account of her visit.

	Audubon Area Community Services' newest family development center was officially opened for services with a celebration on the grounds of the AACS central office building in Owensboro, with a subsequent ribbon cutting and opening at the new facility just a half block away at 316 Hale Avenue. The new west-end Owensboro facility has been named the... Audubon Area Family Development Center

The Center will operate as an adjunct center to the extremely successful Rolling Heights Family Development Center.
Both centers operate with the loyal support of a blue ribbon Advisory Council chaired by Ms. Helen Sears and composed of a stellar group of local citizens and child/family advocates. The overarching goal of these centers is to assist AFDC families to transition from welfare to self-sustaining sufficiency, without public assistance. More than thirty families have been transitioned from welfare to full self-sufficiency because of the east-end Rolling Heights center, now a highly regarded United Way "agency", since its establishment in 1989. So the Owensboro community and the AACS, Inc. embraced "welfare reform" long before it became a national crusade. But here it was done not as a means of curbing "wasted" federal expenditures but as a means to help rebuild lives and families that might otherwise waste their own potential and human fulfillment. It has worked. And it saves both lives and public money!

The Lawrence and Augusta Hager Educational Foundation helped sponsor the grand opening and celebration.

Following are some scenes from the grand opening and celebration...

The Audubon Area Family Development Center is officially opened with the ribbon cutting pictured above. The next photo pictures Ms. Rasco during the Audubon Area Family Development Center open house that followed the ribbon cutting.

White House Domestic Policy Advisor Carol Hampton Rasco addressed the crowd of more than one hundred attending the celebration. She told the gathering that there are five basic principles to which government and communities should commit: 1) building capacity, 2) expanding the support systems to truly make it possible for people on welfare to achieve lasting self-sufficiency, 3) develop linkages in such a way as to provide comprehensive services, 4) leverage private sector support, and 5) systematically evaluate the needs and what a community needs to do. She said she had learned that the national agenda must be about grassroots efforts, like Rolling Heights and "Harry Smith" (the Housing Authority site where the new Center is located)--that is, the Audubon Area Family Development Center. Three important lessons for community and individual success came, she said, from her visits to local communities like Owensboro:

There must be an inclusion of a broad range of stateholders,

There must be a sense of shared vision among those stakeholders, and

There must be a strong commitment to results.

She spoke of a new federal initiative, the Partnerships for Stronger Families project. It endeavors to first bring all the federal entities together in service and support to community efforts, then it works to bridge the too often piecemeal services together into better coordinated services. Finally, it takes advantage of communications technology and interactivity to undergird these efforts. Soon the federal government will put in place a Web site at family.gov, she said, to help individuals and communities access the help they need.

We all must learn to "listen more and smarter" to what's going on at the community level, she said. And we must come to realize and know that if we are to maintain our standing in this world that we must invest in our families and children, for "there not a single child to waste."

Pictured to the left are Kim Cocklin, senior executive with Texas Gas Transmission Corporation, a significant corporate supporter of Audubon's family development centers; Helen Sears, chairperson of the Advisory Council; and Ms. Rasco, the President's chief domestic policy advisor. A special tribute is due to Helen Sears. She has been Rolling Heights' Number One Advocate since its beginning in 1989. And the new Audubon Area Family Development Center has been "her baby" from way befor its beginning. She conceived the idea for it and caused it to become a reality. All Owensboroans are more indebted to this caring, energetic, persuasive, and effective child advocate than virtually any of them truly knows. She is making a huge difference in the quality of life, the social capital, and future of this community!

Pictured to the right are Jeanine Smartt, policy analyst with the Domestic Policy Council, and Dr. Mimi Davis, a longtime friend of Ms. Rasco, who was largely responsible for Ms. Rasco's visit to Owensboro. On behalf of Audubon Area Community Services, Inc., we thank Dr. Davis, Advisory Council Chair Helen Sears, celebration organizer Crystal Cocklin, AACS Executive Secretary Janice Smith, Housing Authority of Owensboro Executive Director Patti Rayburn, mistress of ceremonies Libby Alexander, media organizer Suzanne Collier, AACS Board Chair Dr. Ellen Dugan-Barrette, the Hager Foundation, AACS Associate Director Bill Staples, Joyce Gruenewald, Family Development Center Directors Sonya Jewell and Roxie Roby, Ted Peveler and his Head Start maintenance staff, the ladies of First Presbyterian Church, and the many others who made this celebration possible.

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Prior to the grand opening celebration Ms. Rasco convened a panel of Owensboro advocates to seek information on why the Rolling Heights Family Development Center has been so successful. She and Jeanine Smartt, policy analyst with the Domestic Policy Council, said that they wanted to take back to The White House an understanding why Owensboro's Rolling Heights model worked. Perhaps it could be a viable model for other federally supported initiatives and local communities to replicate. That meeting was held in the conference room of the Housing Authority of Owensboro in Rolling Heights and hosted by its director, Patti Rayburn.
Both the Audubon Area and Rolling Heights Centers are partnerships between the Housing Authority, the United Way, the Advisory Council and Audubon Area Community Services.

Also prior to the Audubon Area Family Development Center grand opening, Kentucky Cabinet for Families and Children and the Hager Foundation sponsored a collaboration meeting (pictured below) with representatives of several local agencies, meeting in the Audubon Area Community Services, Inc. Board Room, with Norm Zimlick from the Washington, D.C.-based Center for the Study of Social Policy. The purpose of the meeting was to help foster an understanding of the newly funded initiative of the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation to devise and implement mechanisms to secure additional federal reimbursement for needed child protective services and to support child protective reform activities at the local level. Because of its widely known commitment and history of using collaboration as a tool for improving and expanding the delivery and impact of human services, Owensboro was selected as one of three pilot sites in Kentucky for this initiative.

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